Management Consultants

Running head: MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS
MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS
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Author Note

1MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS
The practice in the process of improving performance of organizations by the help of
skills and competencies is known as management consulting. The services of management
consultants are drawn by the organizations for acquiring the access to specialized services of
consultants. The management consultants are in general exposed to the practices of numerous
organizational clients, which constructs their awareness as well as competencies in regards to
the consulting advice (Brussalis and Pallitto 2017). Management consultancies offers
improved skills of training, technology implementation, process analysis, improvement
advice for operational functions as well as provide strategic development advice. The purpose
of the paper is to identify and understand the skills as well as the Alenius, L., Lidén, C. and
Johansson, A., 2016 competencies, which are required by the management consultants in
each stages of the consulting projects. The paper will be stress on the qualities, which a
management consultant must possess in order to serve an organizational client. The paper
will be concluded by the presenting a summary of the important skills required by
management consultants for serving business clients.
The frameworks and methodologies are offered by the management consultants in
order to identify the problematic areas for facilitating the basis of recommendations. The
consultants helps the businesses for the purpose of improving as well as developing strategies
in the process of rectifying issues. The assistance of the management consultants are not
restricted to the private firms but also extends to the public sector for the help in the areas of
cost saving as well as development of improved service offerings.
The steps of consulting process includes five stages, initial entry and contract phase,
data collection and inquiry of the functionality and issues, interpretation and feedback stage,
implementation stage and decision of extension, recycle or contract termination.
The first stage comprise of the primary contract with a specific client for
understanding the basis of the project. This stage includes seeking appointment for setting up

2MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS
the very first meeting with the concerned official in the client organization followed by the
steps of identification and understanding the major problematic areas. Synchronizing the
skills as well as the resources of the management consultant with the area of concern in the
organization and finally identifying the procedures for proceeding with the project is very
crucial (Stout 2017).
The skills required for initial entry and contracting majorly involves interpersonal
skills. The quality of listening may seem to be a basic quality but it reflects greater
importance in the initial stage of meeting a client, as the consultant needs to understand the
communicated as well as hidden concerns clearly, which needs assistance in the client
organization. The management consultant should possess the qualities of building trust by the
process of listening, appreciating skills for acquiring the facility of knowing internal business
issues (Anderson 2016). The presence of interviewing skills is also very crucial, as the client
may not be able to identify the actual problem behind a project or plan failure, which is
generally the major reason for realizing the requirement of management consulting services.
Non-verbal communication skills are also required for the facilitating the success of the
initial meeting, as the initial meeting requires the understanding of the client’s background
and issues which needs patience and effective non-verbal communication. Effecting
communications skills for understanding and stating each other’s expectations, transparency
in expectations develops trust between the consultant and the client (von Platen 2015).
The next step, data collection and enquiry stage involves consultant’s role of
understanding and deducing the issues as per their understanding and professional awareness.
This stage requires most involvement of the consultants. This stage also involves the
understanding of the guidelines and protocols as well as identifying the source as well as the
process of data collection (Bal and de Jong 2017).